A few weeks ago, there was a rather nice article about the Nice Ride program, the Twin Cities version of Montreal’s Bixi bike-share program, and how well it’s been doing.
The comments left by right-wing intellectuals were not as nice, and often not even coherent:
minn12 Apr. 29, 1210:09 PM
Could we please have a story on what this all costs? Is this program paying for itself, or losing money without all the sponsors?
Despite being told by the very next commenter that it was almost all privately funded, “minn12” spent his next few comments ranting about alleged waste of his tax dollars — when he wasn’t ranting about how nonprofit entities, entities working for the public good, were immoral. Never mind that (as sane commenter “jimdog” pointed out) BCBS, one of Nice Ride’s sponsors, has a vested interest in keeping people healthy and that getting them to make lots of short bike trips instead of hopping in their cars to go six blocks is a really good way to do that. Never mind that enabling people to make short bike trips downtown relieves downtown streets of a lot of car congestion. Never mind that it’s simply the right thing to do. “minn12” couldn’t care less — he’s sucked deeply into the selfish Ayn Rand evil part of the Stupid-Evil-Crazy Vortex that holds that compassion and the common good must be destroyed and nothing will suck him back out again.
And now for something that will not upset very many right-wing intellectuals — the JPMorgan debacle. Paul Krugman explains why: “But of course JPMorgan wasn’t doing do-gooder liberal stuff like solar, it was just engaging in financial tricks of little or no social value. That makes it all OK.”
Or, as what I suspect Krugman means to say but knows that he won’t be allowed to say by his NYT bosses:
“Are you wondering why the Republicans prefer to beat up on Solyndra rather than go after real crooks like Jamie Dimon — even though you’d think that Dimon’s status as an Obama buddy would make him a tempting Republican target?
“Simple: It’s because to attack Dimon and JPMorgan is to attack everything the Wall Street firms that own the GOP hold dear — namely, the perceived ‘right’ of the hyper-rich to rip every last dime out of our hides while chanting about freedom and the flag.”
And that is that.
Mercury Rising 鳯女 